Messiah the true servant: God's glorious answer to His rejection

The Messiah is brought in, for it is He who delivers. But it is a
question apart, so to say. The subject of Christ, and of the people's
guilt with respect to Him, begins with chapter 49, which, with the
following to the end of chapter 57, forms a whole; and, if one may
venture to say so, Christ takes the place of Israel as the true
servant of God. As He declared. "I am the true vine." [1]
This makes an apparent difficulty, but gives the true sense of chapter
49. Israel is the vessel of the glory of God on the earth, and the
Spirit of prophecy in Israel calls on the isles of the Gentiles to
hearken, as being thus chosen of Jehovah. "Thou art my servant, O
Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (v. 3). Then Christ, by this
same prophetic Spirit, says, "then have I laboured in vain."
For we know that Israel rejected Him. Verse 5 is the answer. He shall
be glorious. It would be a light thing to restore the remnant of
Israel. He shall be the salvation of Jehovah unto the ends of the
earth. Here we find a principle that is applicable to the work of
Christ, even in the days of the gospel. But for the fulfilment of the
counsels of God the succeeding verses carry us on to the millennium.
Verse 7, Christ is exalted. Verse 8, He is given for a covenant of the
people (Israel) to secure the blessing of the land of Canaan, and the
long desolate inheritance, and then the deliverance of the
captives. At length God has comforted His people. Zion, apparently
forsaken, must confess that Jehovah's faithfulness is greater than of
a mother to her sucking child. Her destroyers are gone, her children
flock in crowds to her and replenish her waste places, which regorge
with an unlooked-for multitude before the eyes of the astonished
mother, long time desolate. Kings shall be her nursing fathers, and
shall bow down to her. And although she has been the captive of the
mighty, she shall be delivered, and her oppressors trodden under
foot. And all flesh shall know that Jehovah is her Saviour. This is
the result in grace of the introduction of the true Servant.

[1] So, I doubt not, in Matthew, "I have called my Son out of
Egypt." Christ replaces the first Adam before God, though
blessing in that new position many of his children. He takes the place
of Israel also, though blessing the remnant and making it the nation.